Management and Leadership Style: Is Style Influenced by Engineering Education?

Leadership Development Programs (LDPs) programs are employed by firms globally in different multiple manners that are aimed at accelerating the development and growth of highly capable candidates. Among these candidates, depending on the particular LDP, may be those possess engineering skills typically afforded through engineering education as measured by completion of an engineering degree. Infrastructure reductions might be afforded corporations if multiple LDPs could be supplanted with one program such as an Engineering Leadership Development Program. In practice, however, economic constraints limited the total sample population of this category to 67 (48 with engineering degrees and 15 without). Employing SPSS Sample Power 3, based on the pilot testing for CPMs, 113 subjects per group (with and without engineering degrees - totaling 226) would be required to yield a power of 80%, and of the 350 received completed surveys received, CPMs meeting the desired criteria accounted for only 63 (18%) of the total number of rated organizational leaders. Consequently, while all testing included the CPM group, the scope was expanded to also include managers with and without PMI certifications as well as managers with and without engineering degrees. The first research hypothesis was Ho: There is no affiliation amongst Transformational Leadership (TL) and engineering education. Thus, the author’s aim is to determine the role, if any, that engineering education plays in perceived leadership style as exhibited by CPMs and non-CPMs holding engineering degrees (e.g. EE, ME, IE, etc.) versus the same without engineering degrees. A secondary goal is to determine, within the management category, which style (transformational or transactional) serves as the dominant style of leadership. With this in mind, the independent variable, CPMs with and without engineering degrees, was operationally defined consistent with this Project